A Naples community's activities director has been charged with grand theft after Collier County detectives said she told residents for two years that she had cancer, and GoFundMe has refunded more than forty one thousand dollars to the people who gave

The Collier County Sheriff's Office has charged the former activities director of a Naples community with grand theft, saying she told residents for two years that she had cancer while collecting money from them.

According to the sheriff's office, as reported by WINK News, Maribeth Jones, 51, of Bonita Springs, took more than $40,000 from 238 residents of Winding Cypress. Detectives say she told residents between 2022 and 2024 that she had cancer and was undergoing treatment, and that she used the money to pay personal debts.

Jones is charged with grand theft between $20,000 and $100,000, a second degree felony. The sheriff's office says she turned herself in at the Naples Jail Center after detectives obtained a warrant for her arrest.

She has not been tried and she has not been convicted. Everything set out here is an account of what the sheriff's office and its detectives say, and a charge is an allegation rather than a finding.

Detectives say the account was sustained over a long period. They say Jones presented her condition as worsening, and that community members cut her hair on the understanding that she was preparing for chemotherapy.

Residents set up a GoFundMe page that was linked to her personal bank account, the sheriff's office says, and also gave cash and personal cheques. Investigators say she had been the beneficiary of two earlier GoFundMe campaigns in which she also said she had cancer.

The money side has partly unwound itself. GoFundMe has removed the fundraisers, and more than $41,000 has been refunded to donors, according to WINK News. Nothing has been reported about the cash and the cheques that went directly from one neighbour to another, and there is no platform standing behind those.

Two of the residents spoke to WINK News. Kay Ballard, who has lived at Winding Cypress for nearly ten years and helped hire Jones, gave $100. Kellie Harris, who worked alongside Jones almost daily, said she created the GoFundMe in February 2023 at another resident's request but did not donate to it herself, and said she was suspicious at the time.

Sheriff Kevin Rambosk described the case as one that exploited the generosity of people who believed they were helping someone fighting for her life. He also set out the cost he sees beyond the money: this type of fraud, he said, "not only hurts victims financially, it undermines trust in legitimate fundraisers for people who genuinely need help."

The sheriff's office is asking people to verify a fundraising story through trusted family members and friends before donating.

Two things in the available account do not quite line up, and this brief leaves them as they are rather than smoothing them over. The sheriff's office is reported as placing the cancer claims between 2022 and 2024, while the GoFundMe page at the centre of the case is described as having been created in February 2023. Separately, the sum said to have been taken is given as more than $40,000, while the amount GoFundMe has refunded is put at more than $41,000, and no source explains how the two relate.

One limit on this item is worth stating plainly. This desk could not obtain the sheriff's office's own written release covering the arrest, and did not retrieve the booking record, which sits behind a terms acceptance on the office's public arrest database. A second outlet reported to have described the arrest affidavit could not be read either. So this is a credited account of WINK News's reporting rather than a reading of the underlying documents, and the single charge stated above is the only one supported by anything this desk read directly.

No court date has been reported. Nothing has been published, anywhere this desk could reach, about how Jones answers the accusation.